To watch Bangarra's dancers move fluidly across a stage they are all but a single entity. Together they move sinuously and intertwine their bodies in an action that is slow and sensuous. Their movement speaks of the interconnectedness of things: dancer to dancer, muse to choreographer, human to land. The tangling of bodies imitates the plant life of Lake Eyre, for when Bangarra choreographer Frances Rings was there alongside Arabunna elder Reg Dodd, who acted as a guide, she saw trees with contorted limbs that looked, to her, ''like women'', suspended, waiting for water to come.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This was a research trip that informed Bangarra's latest work, Terrain, which is on at the Canberra Theatre from September 13-15.
Rings says of Dodd, ''This man, to see him on his land, it's like he comes alive. [The land] is part of his body, it's part of who he is. It ultimately reflects in his identity and his family.''
Terrain was to take its cues from indigenous Australians' relationship to country and land, which Bangarra has previously explored, but that Rings wanted to tackle on a deeper level. Focusing on Lake Eyre, for which the Arabunna people waged a 14-year battle to win native title rights, she and the Bangarra contemporary indigenous dance company went to look at the lake in its past lives: once a sea, once a rainforest, and once a salt pan.
''They are all scarred into its surface,'' Rings says. ''You feel like you're watching time passing by.''
Terrain is Rings' sixth Bangarra work and her first full-length work for the company. The creation of a full-length work means greater exploration of the narrative and a chance to dive deeper into the narrative and creative process. ''You're not at all compromised: it's your story and your inspirations. It's the collective inspiration of all of the creatives.''
To leap from exploration of a physical space, Lake Eyre, which the production's composer, David Page, describes as ''alienating … like another planet'', to dance movements and a production, Rings gets to the studio and draws the story out by understanding how dancers respond to it, which movements best reflect it and how the story can be translated to reflect its layers and complexities.
Some of Rings' dancers describe her choreography as challenging.
Daniel Riley McKinley says the inward rotation of her knees is so hyperflexible that sometimes she will demonstrate an action and he'll know it's beyond his own physical limitations. ''Sometimes, watching her I feel my knees kind of squeal because they are a bit nervous about what they have to do.''
Rings returns the compliment. Though a veteran dancer in her own right, she does not consider herself the strongest dancer at Bangarra.
''I suppose I have a particular way of moving. But I look at Daniel and go, 'Oh my god, he's an incredible performer, an incredible dancer, I could never emulate any of that.'
''But what we do is find the meeting place and that's what's exciting when I work with Daniel or someone like him. It's where we meet that's the most interesting part of the process. When it goes to the stage and people see the end product, it's beautiful and it's refined, but it's so exciting. If you get a chance to watch a rehearsal and watch a choreographer and a muse or a dancer and a creator, how they work and find this place that is the merging of my ideas with his physicality and the essence of story, that is what really inspires me.''
The proudly indigenous Rings, a descendant of the Kokatha tribe, says it's only natural that her background should feed her work at the dance company.
''It always has. It defines who I am as a person, as a mother, as a woman, as a creator. It's everything. But [I am also defined by] the experiences my German father has passed on to me as well. He probably had the most influence on my creative process.''
What she most wants audiences to get out of the show is an understanding of the importance of the landscape, not just to indigenous people, but as a part of everyone's lives.
''We're incredibly lucky in this country, we still have pristine areas and at the same time we have a responsibility to preserve those areas and maintain them and make sure they're managed in the right way so we have them for hundreds more years.''
More on Daniel Riley McKinley, 26, a dancer who honed his craft in Canberra, dancing with Quantum Leap from years 7 to 12. Having always moved his body in some capacity - tap dancing, juggling, summer cricket, winter soccer - once he was sure dance was the path for him he began ballet in year 12. He settled on dance as his destiny after watching Bangarra's production The Dreaming about a decade ago.
''It was around that age that I was fully starting to comprehend myself what being able to connect as an indigenous Australian meant,'' he says. Now identifying himself as a proud Wiradjuri man, he was not told he was indigenous until late primary school. His father wanted to wait until he could understand ''the concept of it''.
Bangarra's The Dreaming was a lightbulb moment for the younger Riley McKinley.
''I felt it,'' he says. ''I was more than entertained by it, I felt it and was awakened. It flared up something in my soul and spirit.''
Since then, he is steadfastly certain of the power of dance as a connector. He describes his best moment in dance as a time he and three other men performed a men's war fighting dance from north-east Arnhem Land. The dance is a rite of initiation. The men performed it on the dirt in a remote community on a searingly hot day with sweat gushing from their bodies.
Riley McKinley worried that the sight of a band of outsiders performing deeply traditional dance would not win favour with that community.
''For me that moment stands out because as a fair-skinned indigenous person performing something so traditional for these people, we thought it would freak them out seeing us emulate them.
''But they loved it, they knew we didn't just perform it, we gave it our spirit and performed it to its full extent. There was respect there at that moment.''
It's the universality of dance and its ability to transcend language that moves Riley McKinley - and, in turn, makes him move.
''Dance is a universal medium,'' he says. ''Anybody can do it, anybody can enjoy a dance performance. I think it's one of the art forms that transcends language.
''When we do a tour overseas, they may not understand the story, but they gain the beauty of the culture and a sense of it through what we do.''
When he ruminates on the nature of performance, he marvels at its natural strangeness - that audiences will come to just sit and watch him and the company move their bodies.
''It's quite bizarre. But I wouldn't do anything else.''
Terrain is on at the Canberra Theatre from September 13-15. Tickets cost $39-$63. For bookings 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
